3 Nonalcoholic Vitamix Cocktails: Mocktails!

This video is brought to you by our user-supported Vitamix blog, Life is NOYOKE. Go to lifeisnoyoke.com to learn more. Oh, that is so good. That is so delicious. That makes you want to go on vacation. Hi, today we are making three specialty mocktails in our Vitamix container. I'm Shalva. I'm with lifeisnoyoke.com. It's our user-supported Vitamix website. Tons of recipes there, but today we're adding three new ones, mocktails. For whatever reason, you might be drinking mocktails. These are delicious. I'm going to start off with the most classic cocktail of all time, the Pina Colada. This one reminds me of being on a beach vacation, an all-inclusive resort, and it's delicious without the alcohol. Easy, easy, easy to drink without the alcohol. I'm using unsweetened pineapple juice. This one happens to come in a can. I'm using two-thirds of a cup of this. One of the great things about these mocktails, if you're making them at home by yourself, is that you can control what you want to put in here. If you're trying to keep the calories down, use coconut water instead of pineapple juice, and that will help keep the calories down, and it'll still be very flavorful. This is full-fat coconut milk. They also sell the lighter version. Again, if you're trying to keep the calories down, I'm using one-to-one ratio there, so two-thirds of a cup of that as well. This is the kind of coconut milk that comes in a can, not in a container like an almond milk container. This is the canned coconut milk. You can find it at most grocery stores now in the Asian food section. Frozen pineapple. I've got one and a half cups of frozen pineapple in here, and then the last ingredient is a sweetener of some kind. I made this last night to test it to make sure that it was going to be perfect for you guys, and I tried it without any sweetener, and it was delicious, but I tried it with one tablespoon of brown sugar, and it was even more delicious. We're going to do that, and if you've got a sweet tooth, put more in. You could go two, three, four if you really want to. Tablespoons of brown sugar in here, delicious. I am going to use my Vitamix A3500. This is the matte navy gold edition. If you notice, it looks amazing in my kitchen. Happens to be navy blue and gold, so it feels like Vitamix made this specifically for me, or at least my kitchen. I think this looks beautiful in here, and I love it, and it makes a great pina colada. All I'm going to do is one and a half. All right. If you're not a pina colada fan, stick around because we've got two more mocktails for you, but I love a good pina colada. I know Lenny loves a good pina colada. Look at how creamy, creamy, creamy that is. You could even add more frozen if you want it thicker, like more smoothie-ish, but this is how I like a good pina colada. You've got simple ingredients, frozen pineapple, coconut milk, pineapple juice, and a little bit of sweetener, and you've got yourself a magical pina colada. If you are feeling fancy and extra, you could use a marshmallow cherry found by the ice cream sundae materials in your local grocery store. And there you go. You've got a gorgeous, how do you make it stay though? Pina colada. You can swim. Oh, there we go. Pina colada. So that delicious recipe is going to be on our website, lifeisnoyoke.com. You'll be able to find the recipe for that there, along with all of our other Vitamix recipes, soups, dressings, ice creams. All of those things are going to be on our website, lifeisnoyoke.com. So we're going to do our next one, but first I'm going to show you how I quickly clean out the blender. So don't judge my sink. There's stuff in there, but I'm going to do a quick rinse down the sides and dump that out. And then I'm going to fill it just a little bit up with water and do a splash of soap. Form over function on this one. This looks pretty, but it takes like 12 seconds for any soap to come out. Obviously not my husband's favorite thing in the kitchen. All right. And then I rinse off the lid and I'm going to press the cleaning cycle, which is this button right here on the A3500. Not all Vitamixes have a cleaning cycle, but every Vitamix can self clean like this. So if you don't have a pre-programmed setting for it, all you do is put a little soap and water and turn it on high for about 30 seconds. And that'll clean it for you. All right, clean. All I do is rinse it or dump it and then rinse it in the sink. And now I'm ready for my next mocktail. So the next mocktail we're going to make is a grapefruit margarita. This is one of our summertime favorite cocktails or mocktails that you could make. And one of the reasons that we love it is that it's just fresh fruit and ice. And so there's no like processed anything in there that you need to use. It's just like having a smoothie, but calling it an evening cocktail, basically. So we are big fans of grapefruit at Life is NOYOKE. But you could do this with any kind of other fruit. You could make a strawberry margarita. You could make a peach margarita. You could get wild with it. There's lots of different fruits that you can do. So I'm going to start with one whole grapefruit. And I'm going to cut the rind off because the rind is bitter. And I'm also going to cut the pith off, which is the white part under the rind, because on a grapefruit especially, it's extra bitter. And I know we're kind of going for bitter sour, but we're not going for extra bitter and sour. So we do our best to get a lot of that off. While you're watching me chop fruits, just a reminder that we are doing this video about mocktails over on our website, which is lifeisnoyoke.com, which is a user-supported website where we talk all things Vitamix. When to buy them, which one to buy, recipes to use or to make. It's a really helpful website if you're at all considering a Vitamix or if you already own one and are wanting to know what to do with it. Soups, dressings, frozen desserts, all the good stuff. Okay, so I put one whole grapefruit. I almost said cauliflower. I don't think that's a cauliflower. One whole grapefruit. I'm putting one whole lemon in there also. With a traditional margarita, the main flavors really are lime and alcohol. But because we are not putting alcohol in, we're kind of making up for the lack of triple sec and putting in some more citrus. If you have an orange on hand, you could add that too. I think with a grapefruit one, it's enough citrus without the orange. But obviously, if you're using something like strawberry instead of grapefruit, you could also add in the orange and that's a good addition. Okay, so I'm doing two whole limes because they're pretty small. And remember, the flavor of a margarita is very limey. So this margarita is the grapefruit margarita. And one of the things that you can do to kind of elevate this to the next level, which if you're already making your own mocktails, you probably are the kind of person that wants to elevate it to the next level, is to throw some jalapeno in there. So because you're making this yourself at home, you can always kind of modify this to your own flavor profile, like whatever you like. So if you like things really sweet, you add extra sweetener. If you like things really spicy, you add a lot of jalapeno. I'm not going to do it today. But you could go anywhere from one tiny little sliver of jalapeno to like a whole seeded jalapeno to make this margarita right for you. Spicy and grapefruit are an excellent combo. I'm adding a sweetener. This is maple syrup. You could use date syrup. You could use straight up sugar. You could use honey. You could use agave. This is two tablespoons. That might not be enough for you. It is still very tart and very like citrus forward. If that doesn't feel like enough for you, add more. And then I'm doing two cups of ice. So you could make this a pour over on the rocks mocktail, but we are making it a frozen blended one today because it just makes it more fun. So again, I'm using the A3500 in matte navy. There are pre-programmed settings on here. So this time I'm going to use the smoothie setting because technically a mocktail really kind of is a smoothie. It's just different flavors, I guess. And it's less about the health and more about the flavor. Although this one is quite healthy for you. All right. So you could, again, add more ice and make this thicker if you wanted. This is kind of what I'm going for is like a crushed icy yum. But you could add like two more cups of ice and make it like a thick frozen margarita, like the kind that you would get at a Mexican restaurant. So to make this extra special, one of the things that you can do at home to make it like extra festive is take one of your lime peels and run it along the rim of the glass like this. And then you can put salt, you can put sugar. I'm using chili lime. You could use tajin, something that has a little kick to it, a little spice to it, especially if you're going to add the jalapeno into your mocktail. So all you do is take the cup empty. There's no ice or anything in there. And you put it in here. This is a miniature pie dish, but you could use any little plate. And now you've got a rimmed cocktail cup. So you pour your delicious grapefruit margarita with the option to add jalapeno. Let me try this one. So good. If you like grapefruit, this is so delicious. Just sweet enough. Sour. I wish I had a jalapeno because now I really want to try it spicy, but it is absolutely delicious. You should make that one. The last one that we're making today is a strawberry mojito. I put up a poll on our Instagram, lifeisnoyoke, and asked, what do you want the third cocktail to be? I already knew I was going to make the grapefruit margarita and the pina colada. And this one, far and away, was the requested one. So we're making a mojito. A basic mojito is just mint, lime, sugar, club soda. We're making a strawberry mojito. So I don't have club soda. I am using water today. You can use club soda, obviously, if you want. Fresh strawberries. This is about a cup worth of fresh strawberries. Mint that you pick from your own garden because you're like a farmer now. We planted a handful of herbs with our kids just to see if we could make them grow. And they did grow, and they're doing really well. And now I have basil to give to everyone. Every time I show up at anyone's house, I'm like, here's a handful of basil. And it looks like I'm going to have to start doing that with mint. So all I'm doing is taking the leaves off of the fresh mint. You can also, obviously, buy mint at the grocery store. You might notice that I'm using a different container this time. This is called the AirDisc container. Vitamix made this container for this purpose, for cocktails, mocktails, for whipping, for making foams, for emulsifying. It basically keeps the solid ingredients, like the strawberries and the ice, from being pulverized and instead kind of agitates everything so that you get the essence of the mint and the juice from the strawberry without actually pulverizing it as in a smoothie. So it's a pretty magical tool if you're trying to batch cocktails or mocktails. This is simple syrup. I'm adding about a shot worth of simple syrup. So that's like two ounces. Simple syrup is just equal parts sugar and water. And you boil it so that you get like a condensed sugar syrup. I have it on hand because I like to use it in my iced coffee. So I keep it in my fridge. But if you do not have it or you do not feel like making it, you can also just add a sweetener of choice in here. Again, honey, agave, date syrup, brown sugar, white sugar, stevia, truvia, whatever it is that floats your boat, it does need a little bit of sweetener. So we talked about how a mojito has mint and club soda and a sweetener. And then the last ingredient is lime. Normally, I would skin a lime and put it into my blender. Because I'm using the AirDisc, it is recommended that you cut it into coins like this. And that way, it has the most surface area for the AirDisc container to do its job. So I am cutting it like this. If you do not have an AirDisc, you can easily still make this cocktail in your Vitamix. All you do is put all the ingredients in, minus the skins on the limes, and just hit pulse a couple of times. You want some texture in there, but you don't want it to all blend together. It will not be delicious all blended together. So pulse a couple of times. That's over here. If you have one of the other machines that have a toggle here, you can do that. If you don't have a Vitamix at all, you can use a mortar and pestle to make this mocktail. I don't own a mortar and pestle. Maybe someday when I'm a real adult, but I don't have one. But it's basically a stick in a cup, and you smash everything down. That is the traditional way of making a mojito. And back in the day when I used to bartend, that is how I made mojitos. And then I'm using a cup of ice on the top. So the ice is just helping to keep the ingredients cool and push the ingredients down into that aerated blade. Blade is the word I'm looking for. So remember, we're looking for something that isn't completely blended. We're looking for the mint to be agitated, and the strawberries to be juiced, and the limes to be juiced. And then we're going to strain it through the actual blender. Ready, go. All right. So remember that what the AirDust does that's magic is batching cocktails for you. And what's really cool is just like with a shaker, you use the lid to pour. So the lid is helping me strain the big chunks. And it's keeping the little chunks, which is how I like a mojito. So you get like a little chunk of strawberry. Look at how beautiful that is. Should we try it? Yum. You can taste the fresh mint. You can taste the strawberry. That is like having drinks on the patio with your friend's drink. It would be even better topped off with a little club soda, to be honest. So when you're making it, splash of club soda at the top. But otherwise, that is perfect. I'm going to do something you shouldn't do at home, but I'm a professional, which is reach into a Vitamix container. This one does not have a sharp blade, but I still want to show you what the limes look like. So this is what the lime looks like now. So instead of blending it up to completion, it juiced it for me. It took all the delicious flavor and the pulp out of it. And the strawberries look like this. So if you don't want to waste the strawberries, you can chuck them in. They're delicious. But that is the magic of the AirDisc container. Remember, we're lifeisnoyoke.com. Think egg whites, yolk. And over there, you can find all of our information about Vitamix and all of our delicious recipes for things like these. Thanks so much for joining us, and we'll see you in the next one. Bye, guys.